Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

I have to start with an apology to the listeners, to those at home and those in their cars on their way home from work, because I have heard some bunkum in my time but nothing like what has been displayed in this chamber today. What we have is a Labor government that is prepared to completely rewrite history—a history that has delivered unprecedented prosperity to the people of Australia. Let us go through some of the things that the Howard government did and their proud record. They reduced Labor’s $96 billion black hole of debt to zero. The interest on government debt decreased from $8.4 billion a year to zero. The average mortgage rate under Labor was 12.75 per cent; under the coalition it was 7.25 per cent. Small business lending rates were 14¼ per cent under Labor, and under the coalition they were 8.9 per cent.

Unemployment was a hideous, destructive 8.2 per cent under Labor. Under the coalition it reached 4.2 per cent, and it is still dropping today. Those are the conditions that this Labor government have inherited. More Australians are in work than ever before. Average inflation over the past 10 or 11 years has been half that which it was under the previous Labor government. So, rather than acknowledging the great things that the previous government did, who do we have playing the blame game now? The spinmeisters of the Rudd-Gillard Labor Party. All of the things that I have listed have benefited Australia’s economy.

Let us look at what the Rudd government have done in their first 100 days. We have seen economic confidence down. We have seen interest rates up. We have seen personal responsibility down, making a mockery of the ‘buck stops with me’ claim which we heard so much about last year. We have heard political rhetoric and spin go up whilst substance has come crashing down. We have heard about government by committee. If you want to talk about bottlenecks, there is a bottleneck for all the Labor apparatchiks to get appointed to one of the many dozens of committees that are going to be running the country pretty soon. We even heard some nonsense from Senator Conroy earlier today about his committee to appoint a committee. Which committee is going to be appointing that committee? It is going to go on and on.

The Rudd government have promised around 100 committees and in the process are actually achieving a goal which we have hitherto never seen: in their first 100 days they have set up a committee every four days. That is an astounding record. That is eight committees a month or thereabouts or 96 committees a year. Those who are going to be newly unemployed as a result of this government’s policies could actually be appointed to a committee. That would keep unemployment rates quite low—dysfunctionally low.

We have seen backflips, broken promises and a whole range of disgraceful cuts from the razor gang. Mr Rudd of course does not announce these cuts himself, because he wants to maintain his squeaky-clean image; he sends his henchmen out to do it. The henchmen go out and say: ‘We’re going to cut $150 million from Centrelink—a very important service provider—and we’re going to leave maybe 2,000 Centrelink workers unemployed. We’re going to make them redundant.’ That is what Centrelink Chief Executive Officer Jeff Whalan said.

What about the superannuation co-contribution savings? Senator Nick Sherry would not say whether $1.1 billion for low-income families would survive Labor’s razor gang. They have slashed $40 million from arts funding—and this is when they are spending $20 million to get young kids to stop binge drinking. Don’t you think it is important for people who are susceptible to binge drinking to have other outlets? The arts is one of those areas for young people to get involved in—not only in areas like dance, theatre or painting but also in music, which is so important to young people today. But, no, the Rudd government is going to slash $40 million from the arts, which will reduce opportunities for young people to pursue a positive agenda.

I spoke to the Australian Sports Commission during estimates. They were having to revise some of their programs because of budget cuts and constraints. These are things that are going to cut to the quick of Australian society. We have a heartless government that are clearly intent on deceiving the public in as many instances as they can. They put out the spin, they put out the rhetoric and they talk about how apparently heartless the Howard government was—saying that it did not help people and would not go the extra mile. The simple fact is that in the area of carers, which is something that this government was prepared to turn its back on, we provided more funding. We funded more carers. Recipients of the carer payment grew by about 465 per cent over the 11 years of our government. There was a 561 per cent real increase in the amount of money available to carers. They knew they could rely on us and, sadly, they were deceived by this government. The blame game is real and is continuing. Labor are reinventing history in some Orwellian theory that they can control all, rather than accepting and placing responsibility where it fairly and squarely lies—which is the bad economic management of the states.

If you want to know where drunken sailor spending has taken place then have a look at the $40 billion of state deficits that have already been run up. It is expected to be $80 billion in only a couple of years time. Gee, have we got an inflation problem? Maybe a $40 billion injection of credit from wasteful state governments is responsible if that is the case. My question to the Rudd government is: when are you going to accept responsibility? They said to us there was not a sliver between their economic management and our economic management, but there is a chasm. It is as wide as the Grand Canyon because we on the coalition side were effective economic managers. What we have on the other side is something that threatens to destroy the Australian economy; and by destroying the Australian economy they destroy the opportunities for our young people—and the benefits that have been passed on to carers, those with disabilities, and the most vulnerable in our society will disappear.

Mark my words: the Rudd government are actually hoping that things do get worse, because then they can play the blame game. Stand up and be counted. Do not pass the buck, because we know the buck stops with Mr Rudd. It is absolutely time for responsibility to be taken. The public demand it—and I believe the public will wake up to the ruse, to the wool that has been pulled over their eyes. You cannot sit on both sides of the fence, Mr Rudd and the Labor Party. That has never been better demonstrated than by Mr Rudd’s claim that he is a Christian socialist. Where I come from, you cannot be a Christian socialist: one does not support the other. You cannot be an economic conservative and lead a terrible, wasteful Labor government.

We know what we are dealing with; the public are already seeing it. They are slashing and burning money so they can increase their committees. They are slashing and burning real programs that benefit real people, people that need help, so they can establish government by committee. It is a travesty. And, despite their reassessment and realignment of Australia’s economic history and the benefits that accrued over the last 11½ years under the leadership of Mr Howard and Mr Costello and a wonderful team that guided Australia through very difficult waters to be the nation we have today, that good work cannot be rewritten. It should not be undone. You should not rewrite history; you should accept that you were given a great economy and a great opportunity, and already you are squandering the legacy of the Australian people.